On a New Cornice Road.
The sunshine quickened us all, and our kuruma took the road like a
flock of birds; for jinrikisha men in company run as wild geese fly,
crisscross. It is an artistic habit, inculcated to court ladies in
books on etiquette. To make the men travel either abreast or in
Indian file, is simply impossible. After a moment's conformity, they
invariably relapse into their own orderly disorder.
This morning they were in fine figure and bowled us along to some
merry tune within; while the baby-carriages themselves jangled the
bangles on their axles, making a pleasing sort of cry. The village
folk turned in their steps to stare and smile as we sped past.
It was a strange-appearing street. On both sides of it in front of
the houses ran an arcade, continuous but irregular, a contribution of
building. Each house gave its mite in the shape of a covered portico,
which fitted as well as could be expected to that of its next door
neighbor. But as the houses were not of the same size, and the
ground sloped, the roofs of the porticos varied in level. A similar
terracing held good of the floors. The result was rather a
federation than a strict union of interests. Indeed, the object in
view was communal. For the arcades were snow galleries, I was told,
to enable the inhabitants in winter to pass from one end of the
village to the other, no inconsiderable distance. They visored both
sides of the way, showing that then in these parts even a crossing of
the street is a thing to be avoided. Indeed, by all report the
drifts here in the depth of winter must be worth seeing. Even at
this moment, May the 6th, there was still neve on some of the lowest
foothills, and we passed more than one patch of dirt-grimed snow
buttressing the highway bank. The bangles on the axles now began to
have a meaning, a thing they had hitherto seemed to lack. With the
snow arcades by way of introduction they spoke for themselves.
Evidently they were first cousins of our sleighbells. Here, then,
as cordially as with us man abhors an acoustic vacuum, and when Nature
has put her icy bell-glass over the noises of the field, he must
needs invent some jingle to wile his ears withal.
Once past the houses we came upon a strip of paddyfields that bordered
the mountain slope to the very verge of the tide. Some of these
stood in spots where the tilt of the land would have seemed to have
precluded even the thought of such cultivation. For a paddyfield
must be perfectly level, that it may be kept under water at certain
seasons of the year. On a slope, therefore, a thing a paddyfield
never hesitates to scale, they rise in terraces, skyward. Here the
drop was so great that the terraces made bastions that towered
proudly on the very knife-edge of decision between the seaweed and
the cliffs. A runnel tamed to a bamboo duct did them Ganymede service.
For a paddyfield is perpetually thirsty.
It was the season of repairing of dykes and ditches in rice chronology,
a much more complicated annal than might be thought. This initial
stage of it has a certain architectural interest. Every year before
planting begins the dykes have all to be re-made strictly in place,
for they serve for both dams and bounds to the elaborately
partitioned fields. Adjacent mud is therefore carefully plastered
over the remains of the old dyke, which, to the credit of the former
builders, is no small fraction of it, and the work then finished off
with a sculptor's care. An easier-going peasantry might often forego
renewal. Indeed, I cannot but think the farmers take a natural
delight in this exalted form of mud pies; they work away on already
passable specimens with such a will. But who does quite outgrow his
childish delights? And to make of the play of childhood the work of
middle life, must be to foil the primal curse to the very letter.
What more enchanting pastime than to wade all day in viscous mud,
hearing your feet plash when you put them in, and suck as you draw
them out; while the higher part of you is busied building a parapet
of gluey soil, smoothing it down on the sides and top, and crowning
your masterpiece with a row of sprigs along the crest? And then in
the gloaming to trudge homeward, feeling that you have done a
meritorious deed after all! When I come to my second childhood,
I mean to turn paddyfield farmer myself.
Though the fields took to the slopes so kindly, they had a preference
for plains. In the deltas, formed by the bigger streams, they
expanded till they made chesswork of the whole. Laborers knee deep
in the various squares did very well for pawns. The fields being
still in their pre-natal stage, were not exactly handsome. There was
too much of one universal brown. This was relieved only by the
nurseries of young plants, small fields here and there just showing a
delicate downy growth of green, delightful to the eye. They were not
long sown. For each still lay cradled under its scarecrow, a pole
planted in the centre of the rectangle with strings stretched to the
four corners, and a bit of rag fluttering from the peak. The
scarecrows are, no doubt, useful, since they are in general use; but
I counted seven sparrows feeding in reckless disregard of danger
under the very wings of one of the contrivances.
The customs of the country seemed doomed that day to misunderstanding,
whether by sparrows or by bigger birds of passage. Those which
should have startled failed of effect, and those which should not
have startled, did. For, on turning the face of the next bluff,
we came upon a hamlet apparently in the high tide of conflagration.
From every roof volumes of smoke were rolling up into the sky, while
men rushed to and fro excitedly outside. I was stirred, myself, for
there seemed scant hope of saving the place, such headway had the
fire, as evidenced by the smoke, already acquired. The houses were
closed; a wise move certainly on the score of draft, but one that
precluded a fighting of the fire. I was for jumping from the
jinrikisha to see, if not to do something myself, when I was stopped
by the jinrikisha men, who coolly informed me that the houses were
lime-kilns.
It appeared that lime-making was a specialty of these parts, being,
in fact, the alternative industry to fishing, with the littoral
population; the farming of its strip of ricefields hardly counting as
a profession, since such culture is second nature with the Far Oriental.
Lime-making may labor under objections, considered generically, but
this method of conducting the business is susceptible of advantageous
imitation. It should commend itself at once to theatrical managers
for a bit of stage effect. Evidently it is harmless. No less
evidently it is cheap; and in some cases it might work a double
benefit. Impresarios might thus consume all the public statuary
about the town to the artistic education of the community, besides
producing most realistic results in the theatre.
Through the courtesy of some of the laborers I was permitted to enter
a small kiln in which they were then at work. I went in cautiously,
and came out with some haste, for the fumes of the burning, which
quite filled the place, made me feel my intrusion too poignantly.
I am willing to believe the work thoroughly enjoyable when once you
become used to it. In the meantime, I should choose its alternative,
--the pleasures of a dirty fishing boat in a nasty seaway,--if I were
unfortunate enough to make one of the population. I like to breathe
without thinking of it.
The charcoal used in the process came, they told me, from Noto.
I felt a thrill of pride in hearing the land of my courting thus
distinctively spoken of, although the mention were not by way of any
remarkable merit. At least the place was honorably known beyond its
own borders; had in fact a certain prestige. For they admitted there
was charcoal in their own province, but the best, they all agreed,
came from their neighbor over the sea. They spoke to appreciative
ears. I was only too ready to believe that the best of anything came
from Noto. Did they lay my interest to the score of lime-making,
I wonder, or were they in part undeceived when I asked if Noto were
visible from where we were?
"It was," they said, "on very clear days." "Did I know Noto?" What
shall a man say when questioned thus concerning that on which he has
set his heart? He cannot say yes; shall he say no and put himself
without the pale of mere acquaintance? There is a sense of nearness
not to be justified to another, and the one to whom a man may feel
most kin is not always she of whom he knows the most.
"I am by way of knowing it," I said, as my eyes followed my thoughts
horizonward. Was it all mirage they saw or thought to see, that
faint coastline washed a little deeper blue against the sky? I fear
me so, for the lime-burners failed to make it out. The day was not
clear enough, they said.
But the little heap of charcoal at least was real, and it had once
been a tree on that farther shore. Charcoal to them, it was no
longer common charcoal to me; for, looking at it, was I not face to
face with something that had once formed part of Noto, the unknown!